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REMINISCENCES 

of the 

EULOGY of RUFUS CHOATE 

on DANIEL WEBSTER 

Delivered at Dartmouth College, July 26, 1853 

and 
DISCURSIONS 

more or less therewith connected 

BY 

CHARLES CAVERNO, A.M., LL.D. 

Dartmouth, 185-1 
Author of "Divorce," "A Narrow Ax in Biblical 
Criticism," "Chalk Lines over Morals," "The 
Ten Words," "Theism et Als," etc., etc. 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1914 






^.m'-'^ I '314 



COP^TIIGHT, 1911 

Sni:nMAx, Krexch ^ Coxpaxy 



C C, . :i : li I !ilJ 



PREFACE A 

The title page is perhaps sufficient preface. 

The following letters are inserted because 
they are endorsement of the " Reminiscences 
and Discursions," by men whose judgment is 
held in public respect. I am indebted to both 
these gentlemen for corrections of my manu- 
script. 

Charles Caverno. 

Lombard, Illinois. 



PREFACE B 

85 Devonshire Street 
Boston, October 22, 1913. 
Dr. Charles Caverno, 

Lombard, Illinois. 
My Dear Dr. Caverno : — 

I ran across your favor of the 23rd ult. only 
last evening. We had been away for nearly 
a month and the house had been closed. I 
read your reminiscences through without stop- 
ping. The paper was extremely interesting to 
me and not less so I think because it was dis- 
cursive, as papers of that sort have a right to 
be. It will, I am sure, interest a great many 
people as it did me. If you have a clear recol- 
lection of the effect of Choate's speaking I 
think it would be well to expand a little upon 
that point. You describe Choate's manner, 
but was there the spell upon the audience that 
we know he often produced? I have been 
told that at the time he made the speech he 
seemed weary. Your paper satisfies me upon 
one point upon which I was curious, and that is 
whether he read or spoke the speech. It seems 



PREFACE B 

to me almost incredible that he should have 
spoken it with literalness, but he appears to 
have done that. It would be Interesting, how- 
ever, to have the version of Mr. Raymond if 
that were printed from his — Raymond's — 
notes and not compared, as you say it was, 
with Mr. Choate's manuscript. I want to ex- 
press again the pleasure which the reading of 
this paper gave me and the hope that it will be 
published. 

Sincerely yours, 
(Signed) S. W. McCall. 



PREFACE C 

Dover, N. H., December 8, 1913. 
My Dear Caverno: — 

I cannot express to you the height of the 
pleasure you have given me by sending me this 
manuscript. I have read it more than once, 
and that is the reason I have not returned it 
before. It calls up so many of the joyful hours 
we have had in life, and the great experiences 
of which you and I can speak, more, I am sure, 
than the average among men. 

To send it to me was most considerately 
thoughtful in you. And then you have given 
such a graphic portrayal of the events of our 
long pilgrimage, and of this one particularly — 
which made such a profound impression upon 
us — and is so much a part of great history. 

You have told the story of that day and in- 
vested it with an interest that perhaps none but 
you and I can appreciate. I recall the mem- 
orable summer day and the old church — the 
crowd — the rush — the intense interest — 
and the great orator as he unfolded before us 
what has always seemed to me one of the great- 



PREFACE C 

est literary and oratorical performances in the 
history of man. 

Most graphically have you told the story 
with just enough of personal incident to make 
It attractive and life-like. 

The story of the oration with its accessories 
and collateral incidents reproduces to me a 
memorable experience. I sat down not far 
from the left-hand center of the aisle close by 
the " coign of vantage " which you occupied — 
crowded into a seat in the most favorable place 
I could get and hold in the rush — and I sat 
immovable while the melancholy, dark-skinned 
and curly-headed wizard poured forth those 
great periods, standing firmly on his feet, and, 
as you say, making no gesture or movement, 
but given up apparently to introversion — to 
the obsession, as it were, of his own memories 
of the great presence, gone from his and our 
mortal sight, " till the heavens be no more." 

You have happily discriminated and pre- 
sented the double character of Choate as the 
" Attorney " and as the " Philosopher and 
Statesman." 

Your calling the oration the crowning prose 
threnody is happy. It is just that. In fact, it 
is the most pathetic lament in our language. 
How much I have been drawn to it, and how it 
has clung to my memory that has given up al- 



PREFACE C 

most all things else! There has never been an 
hour for sixty years past when I couldn't re- 
peat from memory, with absolute accuracy, the 
first twelve lines from the Munroe edition as 
you transcribe them — " It would be a strange 
neglect," etc. — and the close which you also 
quote, is grand and without parallel. 

How much neglected and how little known, 
how unfamiliar even to scholars, Is this great 
discourse ! How it could have escaped fame 
and comment, as it has, is a mystery — and to 
the disgrace of culture and the students of lit- 
erature and eloquence! For it stands at the 
summit of all such performances. 

Burke's " Impeachment of Warren Has- 
tings " is great, but of another sort, and not its 
equal In literary and other richness. 

You refer to Parker. Parker's " Dis- 
course " was great. It was sour while Choate's 
was sweet. Perhaps I rate it higher than vou 
do — perhaps I also rate Lodge higher — 
for, in truth, with all my admiring pride for 
the stupendous intellect, the noble nature, the 
fervid patriotism, and the vast services of Mr. 
Webster, I can't get over nor drown out from 
my memory the terrible Indictments of Parker 
and Whitticr, nor the cold but merciless argu- 
ment of Lodge. 

But how true it Is that the events of '60 were 



PREFACE C 

a complete vindication of the fears and the 
Judgment of the great man of '50! 

Your introduction of Ogden Hoffman, Sew- 
ard, Phillips and other episodes is felicitous. I 
heard Hoffman and all the rest in our old days. 

So you see that I had no exception to take 
to the story of Choate's eulogy, and it is told 
with so much truth, interest and literary style 
in your paper that I shall be glad to see it in 
type. As to the argument — the polemics, 
shall I say — of your second part, I can speak 
but little — because I haven't read it with very 
critical interest, nor have I quite formulated as 
yet my views of Mr. Webster's place in history 
— as to his merits pro and con, and on the 
whole — and can only say that I have read it 
just enough to see that it is done with character- 
istic literary taste, acumen and argumentative 
force, and of course is a valuable and very con- 
clusive presentation of the claims of Mr. Web- 
ster's friends and admirers in the great conten- 
tion as to him which posterity is now and will 
hereafter be concerned with. 

I have only rather cursorily examined and 
now very hastily write about this work of yours, 
but shall hope to place it among my literary 
treasures before the coming of the shadows. 
Yours ever, 
(Signed) Daniel Hall, 
Class of 1854, Dartmouth College. 



Reminiscences of the Eulogy 
of Choate on Webster 

Thoreau, being asked what he thought of a 
certain lecture to which he had listened, said it 
was not interesting — the man had nothing to 
say about himself. On reflection you may see 
that Thoreau stated a principle of criticism of 
deep import and wide range. The personal 
element gives zest to literature. I have this 
year read the autobiographies of General Sher- 
man, Nathaniel S. Shaler, Simon Newcomb and 
Henry M. Stanley. It would be a dull re- 
mainder if the personal element were left out 
from the writings of these men, and only the 
history and science with which they were con- 
nected were set forth. Reminiscences are cer- 
tainly personal. They must embody the mem- 
ory of some man. Comment thereon must be 
doubly personal. The reminiscences I give 
must be mine — the comment certainly mine. 
I assert mine in no derogation of the rights of 
others. At that commencement sixty-one years 
ago many things occurred which I did not see. 



2 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

Much thought can spring from that occasion 
of which I am not master. There still live 
many who can add to or correct what I may 
say. To such I give advice — write your 
memories and reflections and make use of them 
when you have opportunity, as I have fre- 
quently done in the past half centur)'. Then 
you will do something of interest and value at 
least to yourself. 

I am writing of Rufus Choate. I heard 
him on two occasions, and I heard a different 
man each time. About which one of them do 
you expect to hear? Rufus Choate was an 
attorney. Rufus Choate was philosopher and 
statesman. 

I will tell you first about the Rufus Choate 
of whom I do not write. Pardon a little de- 
tour. In the spring of 1856, with my certifi- 
cate of admission to the bar of the State of 
New York in my pocket, I turned my face home- 
ward to New Hampshire that I might see my 
father and mother once more before obeying' 
the command of Horace Greeley or somebody 
— " Go West." In Boston I called on a col- 
lege classmate, William A. Herrick, who had 
himself just been admitted to the bar in Massa- 
chusetts. He said: "Your visit is timely, for 
Choate is at work in court today." I was set 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 3 

sharp for such exercise. In Albany I had seen 
John K. Porter and Lyman Tremaine at their 
best in the courts. I had heard John Van 
Buren and Charles O'Connor spar with each 
other before the Court of Appeals, Hiram 
Denio presiding. I heard, in the fall of 1855, 
William H. Seward in the rotunda of the Cap- 
itol at Albany make the speech in which he dis- 
missed the Whig and Democrat parties and 
espoused the then forming Republican party. 
A little incident occurred which relieved the 
sobriety, almost solemnit>% of Mr. Seward's 
speech. He had said, after discussing the his- 
tory and principles of the Whig party: " Let 
the Whig party pass." After treatment of the 
Democratic party, in like manner he said: 
" Let the Democratic party pass." No sooner 
were the words spoken than a man who was 
seated on the steps beneath Mr. Seward's feet 
jumped up and cried out: "Well, then, let me 
pass, begorra," and made his way rapidly down 
the steps and through the assemblage. But 
the brogue and the " begorra," and the rapid 
exit were such apt comment on Mr. Seward's 
" Let the Democratic party pass," that Mr. 
Seward had to bow himself in laughter with 
the whole crowd. 



4 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

CHOATE THE ATTORNEY 

For the moment I speak of Mr. Choate at 
the bar, who is not Choate of the Eulog}'. The 
Choate of the bar has filled the horizon of pop- 
ular conception so that it is necessary to dismiss 
him with some absoluteness in order that the 
Choate of the eulogy may come to the front. 
Southey gives good description of Choate the 
attorney: 

" How does the water come down at Lodore? 
Here it comes sparkling 
And there it lies darkling, 
Here smoking and frothing 
Its tumult and wrath in 

Now turning and twisting 
Around and around 
In endless rebound." 

Other literature gives: 

" The restless seething sea." 
" The sea wrought and was tempestuous." 

The last sentence Mr. Choate quoted, in a 
speech delivered in Boston, as descriptive of the 
national condition in March, 1S50. If )0u 
rcatl the Bible you can find the quotation in 
]>l:ice. Such quotations suggest the action of 
Mr. Choate in practice in court. There he 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 5 

worked — worked all through and all over. 
His mind was alive and his whole body was 
alert to express his mind. He sprang to his 
feet with the quickness of sight. The long 
curls of coal black hair rolled on his head, his 
arms flew round and round like the spokes of 
my mother's spinning wheel to my childhood's 
eye. You were sure his toes worked in his 
boots with the nervous energy that came down 
to them from the eld prehensile prime. He 
walked about in the clear space in the bar — 
now bending forward, half prone; now straight- 
ening up till you feared he might lose balance 
and fall backward: now he was addressing the 
court and now parleying with the opposing at- 
torney. (By the way Ambrose A. Ranney, 
Dartmouth, 1844, was the opponent. Mr. 
Choate was Dartmouth, 18 19. Ranney was 
afterward for several terms M. C. from a Bos- 
ton District.) Mr. Choate has often been 
called a great actor. If you mean by the word 
anything savoring of histrionic mime, there 
could be no greater misrepresentation. His ac- 
tion was all his own, originated by himself, 
spontaneous to the occasion. That was the 
way in which he filled the demand of the law 
expression " Work, labor and services done 
and performed." He put Into use all the dy- 
namics of his entire being. He lived in such 



6 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

action at the bar. Pardon one or two further 
digressions. 

OGDEN HOFFMAN 

Ogden Moffman of New York City spoke 
before the United Literary Societies in the fore- 
noon of the day of the eulogy in the afternoon. 
To me, a New Hampshire farm boy, it seemed 
strange that the faculty should bring a lawyer 
and politician from New York to divide the 
honors of the day with Mr. Choate. Were 
not Joel Parker and Salmon P. Chase still on 
the horizon of life's activities, and a long line 
of Dartmouth graduates in " the higher walks 
of life," and were there not literati of high rank 
distributed up and down New England? Why 
a New York Dutchman poaching on our manor? 
But I was old enough to learn even then that 
the faculty of Dartmouth might know what it 
was about. 

Here I wish to say that I think the faculty 
of the college from the beginning have been 
wise enough to teach and guide their students. 
We pride ourselves on our graduate roll. But 
there were directing forces behind that roll that 
gave it much of its possibilities. The faculty 
of Dartmouth has not been in the lime light of 
publicity. But as Mr. Webster said of the 
affection of graduates for the college: 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 7 

"There are those" — and they are many — 
" who love " and honor their teachers. 

PROFESSOR ROSWELL SIIURTLEFF 
An incident connected with the action of the 
college when the death of Mr. Webster was 
made public impressed me at the time and still 
is clear in memory. I have never seen it in 
print. It deserves preservation and forward 
passing. At the first meeting of the college in 
the chapel in Dartmouth Hall after the an- 
nouncement of Mr. Webster's death, the fac- 
ulty were seated on the platform. Among them 
came Mr. Webster's tutor — Roswell Shurt- 
leff. This was the first and only time I ever 
saw him in the chapel. He was " an old man, 
well stricken in years " and had long been emer- 
itus. More than half a century had passed 
upon him since he taught Daniel Webster, but 
he carried his six feet of stature with upright 
military precision. It was a cool morning and 
he wore a long cloak which, loose upon his 
shoulders, gave emphasis to his brawny frame 
as he stood up before the students. In his brief 
speech was this remark: "Young gentlemen, 
if there was any one thing that distinguished 
the career of Daniel Webster in this college it 
was this — he minded his own business." I 
am not certain but that is the best synthesis 



8 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

that can be put over the total life of Daniel 
Webster. The serious, earnest attitude to the 
duties before him that marked the youth abode 
with him till his work was done. 

But to return to Mr. Hoffman — my recol- 
lection is that his address was a plea for the hu- 
manities. He was a man " ruddy and of a fair 
countenance," agreeable in demeanor and pleas- 
ing in speech. The occasion was such that he 
could not well help alluding to Mr. Webster. 
But Mr. Choate sat on the platform and must 
be recognized. Mr. Hoffman did it in this 
way: coupling the names Webster and Choate 
together, he simply said, " Fortemque Gyan, 
forttnnqiie Cloantliem." Therein was featly 
executed not only the greatest compliment ever 
paid Mr. Choate but the greatest that could 
be paid him. Think that out and it will take 
you over the immense range of the history and 
psychology of each man. 

Look up Ogden Hoffman. He was a grad- 
uate of Columbia; was commissioned midship- 
man in the war of 1812; was taken prisoner 
with Decatur when " The President " was cap- 
tured and sent to Bermuda. Afterward he 
fought against the Barbary pirates. When 
that affair was finished he resigned from the 
navy to begin a legal career. Decatur remon- 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 9 

strated ; wrote and asked : " Why do you aban- 
don an honorable profession for the law?" 
Mr. Hoffman became eminent in legal prac- 
tice and frequently held a tight rein in hand 
over that rather ungovernable steed, New York 
politics. During all his career he kept alive his 
scholarship. That was the reason he had the 
forenoon of the day of the eulogy. 

AFTERNOON 

For three hours I stood on the sill and 
against the south casing of the second window 
from the north, on the west side of the college 
church. How I came in that window those 
who know the customary march of a procession 
from Dartmouth Hall across the common to 
the church can easily guess. The students led 
the procession and formed the usual open order 
from the church door back as far as the classes 
extended and then the President and dignitaries 
and graduates filed in between the open ranks. 
As Juniors our class w^as well up toward the 
church. I remember looking down the clear 
space way across the street and seeing the on- 
coming of the stalwart form of Salmon P. 
Chase and farther down the bare head and the 
shoulders, high over all, of Long John Went- 
worth. Everything went well with the first 
part of the ingoing procession. But in a few 



lo EULOGY OF CHOATE 

moments the student guard was crumpled on 
itself by the surging outside crowd, and then 
came suddenly a free-for-all struggle to get into 
the church. I was carried along in spite of 
myself. Inside I saw the middle aisle was al- 
ready crowded full. I worked my way to the 
west aisle and along that to the wall pews front- 
ing the platform. I stepped on a seat of the 
first pew not covered by the platform and 
thence, putting a foot on its railing sprang to 
the window sill. 

AN EPISODE 

An incident with which I was connected 
shows how every attempt was made to secure 
a chance to hear Mr. Choate, A man fixed a 
plank against the adjacent vestry building and 
placed one end on the sill of the window in 
which several of us students, with locked arms, 
stood. Somehow he got on the plank and lay 
there prone looking between our legs. Then 
he touched my leg and said, " Give me your 
hand and I can get up and stand on my plank 
and look between your heads." We were 
twelve or fifteen feet above the ground so I 
answered rather gruffly, " Stay where you are. 
"^'ou will pull us all out of the window." A 
lew moments after, he touched me again and 
then said, " Young man, I want to hear Rufus 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER ii 

Choate as much as you do." That was a cen- 
tre shot and I worked my hand down and by it 
he pulled himself up and heard as he wished. 
Some years afterward I was making a visit in 
a Vermont town where a young lady in whom 
I had acquired considerable interest was resid- 
ing with an elder brother. In the course of 
conversation with this brother I mentioned the 
fact that I had heard the eulogy on Webster 
by Mr. Choate. He said by grand luck he did. 
He told how he fixed against an adjoining 
building a plank, one end of which rested on a 
window in the church, and how by making 
friends v.'ith a student who stood in the window 
he got pulled up on his feet and heard the whole 
eulog)'. He said the young man was cross at 
first, but afterward became civil. Which an- 
ecdote teaches this useful lesson — be civil to 
everybody under all circumstances. You do 
not know who may be your brother-in- 
law. 

THE EULOGY 

I could not have been more fortunately 
placed than on that window sill. The whole 
platform and everything in the church was 
open before me. 

When Mr. Choate rose to speak he was at 
full length in view, and so remained till he 



12 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

ceased speaking. His distance from me was 
only half way across the church. 

Now dismiss the idea that you have before 
you Rufus Choate the attorney. He was here 
to fill one of the world's historic occasions and 
he met it in the majesty of calm. All the forces 
of his being were converted to the expression 
of thought in speech. He was " z-ox et prae- 
terea nihil." If he made a gesture during the 
three hours, I do not remember it. That is 
not to say he was a statue, motionless. He 
stepped from side to side or slightly back and 
forth to relieve muscular strain, and once 
turned back to his table to pick up a paper he 
wished to read. This paper was the letter of 
Professor Chauncey Goodrich of Yale, descrip- 
tive of Mr. Webster as he made the argument 
in the Dartmouth College case before the U. S. 
Supreme Court, which argument Professor 
Goodrich heard. He used no notes, though 
they lay on a table behind him. The eulogy 
was extempore in delivery. That he followed 
very closely what he had already written is 
doubtless true, but there was no evidence of 
recitation in his speech. He had evidently 
thought out just what he wanted to say, as he 
wanted to say it, and he read from a mental 
photograph which failed him not. Its content 
was brought out by the light of the occasion. 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 13 

It is written that Jesus, being asked: " Who 
art thou?" answered: "I am in essence (at 
bottom) what I am saying." Mr. Choate 
seemed to realize that description of personal- 
ity. He did not embody, rather he enspir- 
ited, thought and speech. There was nothing 
about him to distract attention from what 
he said. His appeal was to the ear and to 
that " inward eye " which apprehends and 
interprets. This accounts for the fact that 
one could remember so well what he said. 
How true he was to what he had thought and 
written I have two sources of verification. 
When Mr. Choate issued his authorized printed 
edition (Munroe, Boston) I bought and read 
it. I did not find any essential new matter or 
variation in expression from what I heard on 
my " coign of vantage " on the window sill. 

My classmate, Benjamin Ames Kimball, of 
Concord, New Hampshire, reminds me that 
Henry J. Raymond came up from New York 
in a special to report the oration for the New 
York Times. He advised me to look over a 
file of the Times for that report. But it so 
happens that I read that report In the Times 
in its issue the first week after the delivery of 
the eulogy. My brother took the Times, and 
I read the eulogy to him and my father as we 
lay, on the noons of haying days, under the old 



14 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

elm down which the lightning ran when I was a 
babe in my mother's arms, but which now I 
think is not o'ertopped by any elm in Strafford 
County. From this reading under the old elm 
I caught nothing new, or variant from what I 
had heard. The Times files can be consulted 
by the curious and compared with the Munroe 
version authorized by Mr. Choate. 

HENRY J. RAYMOND, 

AND "THE BOYS OF '54 "— GODDING, EATON AND 

HASKELL 

In the early morning of the day after the 
eulogy a crowd of us — students — gathered 
about the hotel to see the celebrities who were 
going away on the early train. Henry J. Ray- 
mond came out, satchel in hand, to walk down 
to the station. The report ran among us (I 
do not know its reliability) that Mr. Raymond 
had sat up all night to compare his notes with 
Mr. Choate's manuscript. Much good would 
his labor have done him if he had had to read 
the manuscript himself, for Choate's handwrit- 
ing was an illegible scrawl even to his own sig- 
nature. But the story ran that Mr. Choate's 
clerk read the manuscript for the comparison. 
We joined Mr. Raymond and walked down the 
hill in the middle of the road. 

The road was the sidewalk in those days. I 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 15 

remember that in the early morning after the 
night of the great St, Johnsbury horn-blow in 
1 85 1 the Rev. Dr. Richards and I walked to- 
gether up the middle of the road. Our path- 
way off the bridge was unobstructed — the 
long gate having been carried away by the stu- 
dents who preceded us. I may add that I did 
not blow a horn on that expedition. Upper 
class dignity and a fear of the pump prohibited 
that exercise to Freshmen. 

The guard of honor for Mr. Raymond down 
the hill was mainly Eaton, Godding and Has- 
kell, all of my class. The rest of us, no ac- 
count fellows, tumbled along before and behind 
as we listed. Godding was for many years 
Superintendent of the U. S. Asylum for the 
Insane in Washington. Eaton was the first 
Commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau, and 
also became Commissioner of the U. S. Bureau 
of Education, which last office he held for fif- 
teen years. Haskell was on General Gibbon's 
staff on the field of Gettysburg, and wrote each 
night an account of the events of the day. This 
record ex-President Charles W. Eliot says is 
not only the best account of that battle, but the 
best account of any battle ever written by any 
man. 

The eulogy is the supreme threne of English 
speech. Threnody is the expression of sorrow 



i6 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

In poetic form. The supreme threnody in our 
language is Tennyson's " In Memoriam." It 
sprang out of contemplation induced by the 
death of Arthur Hallam. Mr. Choate spoke 
in prose, but the threnic tone pervades the 
whole eulogy. It was the utterance of a " soul 
with sorrow laden." It expressed the very 
tenderness of the sense of bereavement. A few 
sentences from the beginning and the end of 
the eulogy will clearly portray this character- 
istic. 

Did you ever hear Wendell Phillips pro- 
nounce the word "serene"? Simply with the 
voice he surrounded you with a whole atmos- 
phere of tranquillity. 

" Strongly he bore you along on swelling and limit- 
less billows." 

You will wander far in the eulogy, over the 
whole range of the greatness of Mr. Webster, 
but you will never be so remote as to be out of 
touch with this feeling of sorrow. Take the 
paragraph at the beginning: 

" It would be a strange neglect of a beautiful and 
approved custom of the schools of learning and of one 
of the most pious and appropriate of the offices of litera- 
ture if the college in which the intellectual life of 
Daniel Webster began, and to which his name imparts 
charm and illustration, should give no formal expres- 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 17 

sion to her grief in the common sorrow; if she should 
not draw near, of the most sad in the procession of the 
bereaved, to the tomb at the sea; nor find in all her 
classic shades one affectionate and grateful leaf to set 
in the garland with which they have bound the brow 
of her child, the mightiest departed." 

Now turn to the closing paragraph: 

" But it is time that this eulogy was spoken. My 
heart goes back into the coffin there with him, and I 
would pause. I went — it is a day or two since — 
alone — to see again the home which he so dearly 
loved, the chamber where he died, the grave in which 
they laid him — all habited as when 

" * His look drew audience still as night 
Or summer's noontide air,' " 

till the heavens be no more. Throughout that spacious 
and calm scene all things to the eye showed at first 
unchanged." 

(I omit here an enumeration of particulars 
in which Mr. Webster was interested — from 
the broad acres and what grew or grazed 
thereon, to the books in the library.) 

" Yet a moment more and all the scene took on the 
aspect of one great monument inscribed with his name 
and sacred to his memory. And such shall it be in all 
the future of America! The sensation of desolateness 
and loneliness and darkness, with which 3-ou see it now, 
will pass away; the sharp grief of love and friendship 



1 8 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

will become soothed ; men will repair thither as they 
are wont to commemorate the great days of history; 
the same glance shall take in and the same emotions 
shall greet and bless the harbor of the Pilgrims and the 
tomb of Webster." 

And so the great eulog}' ended. In its de- 
livery no one had been bound by magic of rhet- 
oric or captivated by charm of manner 

" As of woven paces and of waving hands." 

He spake right on, and all his judgments were 
as passionless as equations of numbers. They 
expressed what to him was and is and is to be 
regarded as right in the great realm over which 
he looked. 

The tone of sorrow evident in the first and 
last paragraphs is an underlying strain through- 
out the whole eulogy. There was not a gleam 
of humor from beginning to end of the eulog^^ 
There was not a smile on the face of the 
speaker and not one on the face of a hearer for 
the three hours. All that time the speaker was 
attent to his theme and the auditory attent to 
the speaker. The impression that presides in 
my memory now, over all others, after the lapse 
of sixty years and one, is that of the " solemn, 
dutiful earnestness of the man." 

Did you mark that word " alone " in the ac- 
count of the visit to Marshfield a few days 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 19 

before the eulogy was delivered? I noticed it 
particularly when it was pronounced on the 
platform. It was spoken distinctly — by 
itself: " I went — it was a day or two since — 
alone." It was a whole threne in itself. 

Did I have special, personal reason for my 
notice of the word? As the years have gone 
by I think more and more that I did. I was, 
during my Junior year, sub-librarian of the Col- 
lege Library. That library was little used by 
the students. They worked by the society li- 
braries. The College Library was open but 
one hour each week to the students. It was in 
fact museum rather than library. 

One day in April, before the eulogy in July, 
to a rap at my door, 4 Reed Hall, I said, 
" Come." Professors Brown and Sanborn 
came in. Behind them was a third man. One 
of the professors said to me: "This is Rufus 
Choate. We want you to take him into the 
College Library and assist him as he may need. 
We have recitations for the next hour and we 
shall leave him in your charge." That was the 
first occasion on which I saw Mr. Choate. 

I conducted him to the Library and asked him 
what I could do for him. He said he wanted 
writing materials. I readily placed them on 
the table in the south end of the room which 
occupied the whole east side of Reed Hall. 



20 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

Then he said: " I shall not need you. I will 
take the key and bring it to your room when I 
have finished here." He accompanied me to 
the door and locked it after me. At the close 
of the hour he brought the key to my room, 
one fioor above. I saw him go across the com- 
mon to Professor Sanborn's house. That is 
all, I think, any one knows of that hour of Ru- 
fus Choate alone m the College Library in 
April, 1853. 

I learned from Professors Brown and San- 
born these facts in regard to that visit of Mr. 
Choate to Hanover. He was going to Mont- 
real on business and notified the professors 
that he would stop over half a day with them. 
His visit was to be entirely private. Some of 
the students who knew him happened to see 
him and there was quite a little breeze among 
them over his presence in the town. But he 
went away in the afternoon as quietly as he 
came in the morning. 

I have thought, as the years have gone, that 
taking that time between trains for the call at 
Hanover, and securing the quiet hour in the 
College Library might have the same psychic 
interpretation which he himself has given to 
the visit " alone '' at Marshfield a few days be- 
fore the delivery of the eulogy. Out of that 
lone visit to Marshfield came by his own testi- 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 21 

mony that beautiful, masterful, sorrowful evo- 
lution which constitutes the final tribute to Mr, 
Webster. 

May not the few hours between trains in 
Hanover and especially the hour alone in the 
library have been utilized in reflection out of 
which sprang the thought and feeling inwoven 
in the opening pages of the eulogy? Think 
how much the college meant to himself. He 
had taken the full course of studv and then de- 
layed a year as tutor in the college. Then 
think how much, with this experience, he must 
have thought the college meant to Daniel Web- 
ster, with his memory of student life supple- 
mented by the labor and care and affection 
shown in the conduct of the great legal case in 
which he preserved the college on the original 
foundation, and on which it has since continued 
its powerful, happy and blessed influence. 

May it not be — must it not be — that that 
hour alone in the library finds explanation in 
the beginning of the eulog\- as the visit alone 
to the home and tomb at Marshlield finds ex- 
pression in its close? 

THE RANK OF THE EULOGY 

It must be rated as one of the greatest in- 
tellectual efforts of man. Consider the im- 
mense range of the subjects discussed and the 



22 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

perfect mastery of language In extempore de- 
livery. 

For instance, turn to the fortieth page (Mun- 
roe Edition) and you begin a sentence which 
does not end till you reach the middle of the 
fort}^-fifth. But that single sentence contains 
an enumeration of the particulars and of the 
character of the public life and services of Dan- 
iel Webster from 1813, when he entered Con- 
gress from New Hampshire, to his death in 
1852. Is there another such sentence cover- 
ing matter of such historic import in the Eng- 
lish tongue? If you want a brief life of Dan- 
iel Webster turn to that sentence. At the time 
of its delivery I soon perceived that we were 
" on a wide, wide sea," and wondered whether 
he could make port without a wreck of gram- 
mar and connection. But turn to the end of 
the forty-fifth page and you will see that he 
did. 

The oration masses the actions and events of 
fort>^ years of the nation's history and elabo- 
rates the influence of Mr. Webster therein. If 
you want a comprehensive life of Daniel Web- 
ster, public and private, you will find it in the 
eulogy. There is none other so valuable. 
There is not much probability that another of 
such merit can be constructed in the same space. 

Think of all that wealth being packed into 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 23 

one hundred printed pages! Edward Everett 
has said there is nothing greater in the English 
tongue. My classmate, Daniel Hall of Dover, 
New Hampshire, writes me to the same effect. 
I value his judgment as highly as I would that 
of any other man who knows the content of 
English speech. He led our class in all studies 
longo intcrvallo. He has made a special study 
of English oratory during the sixty years since 
he graduated. He is President of the New 
Hampshire Historical Society, and delivered 
the address at the dedication of the Society's 
ntw building in 191 1. He heard the eulogy, 
and his keen, wise judgment is to me conclusive 
of its rank. 

Yet I fear that even scholars, or those who 
ought to be such, are allowing the dust of the 
generations to settle on the covers of this — 
perhaps greatest of English orations — and 
failing to keep in touch with its mastery in liter- 
ature, government and history. 

A few years since I met a man who was fairly 
at the head of the bar in a large western city. 
He was a graduate of Dartmouth College. We 
were talking in his office. " Let me show 
you a treasure," said he. From a drawer in 
his library he brought to me a copy of my own 
(Munroe) edition of the "Eulogy of Choate 
on Webster." He said also: "A la\^7er ^ 



24 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

few days ago in — (another western city) 
gav^e me this." I wondered what the lawyer 
who gave the present could think of his own 
act, and I wondered where my friend had been 
all his life — and a graduate of Dartmouth, 
too — that he had not his own copy and had 
not been a student of it. 

Is this experience characteristic? If it is it 
is a sad comment on the failure to appreciate 
an effort that is at the summit of our literature 
and not excelled in the record of the eloquence 
of any nation. 

Matthew Hale Carpenter, one of the most 
brilliant lights of the American bar, advised 
law students, if they wished to become philos- 
ophers in law, to take some learned jurist and 
follow him through his total work, read every 
scrap of opinion he ever wrote; thus the stu- 
dent would become master of the mastery of 
the jurist. A good introduction to a mastery 
of Mr. Webster would be not only to read but to 
study Mr. Choate's eulogy. There was no man 
in the land who knew so well the content and 
meaning of Mr. Webster's life activities. 
When a student in Dartmouth College he saw 
and heard Mr. Webster in the trial of Jackman 
accused of robbery of the Maine drover — 
Goodridge. Their professional life was largely 
synchronous. They were usually antagonists 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 25 

at the bar and before the courts. Yet they 
were life long friends. That speaks well for 
their conduct and the majesty of their moral 
nature. 

David's lament over Jonathan was no more 
sincere than Choate's sorrow when Webster 
died. Webster's life and character nowhere 
finds summary so complete as in this eulogy. 
Therein Mr. Choate passes his mastery of Mr. 
Webster over to you. Nay, more; therein the 
might and wealth, intellectual and moral, of 
Mr. Choate himself comes to expression. So 
you have a combination upon the like of which 
the sun had not before looked. They talk of 
binaries in astronomy. Instead of the light of 
one sun the light of two shines together in a 
single star. You have a binary in Choate's 
" Eulogy upon Webster." The light and heat 
and magnetism from both ray in upon you, a 
unit in effulgence and power. 

I cannot comment on the totality of this ora- 
tion. Study it by topic and by sentence and you 
will find reward in literary felicity, in concep- 
tions great and true in government and ethics. 

If this writing is personal reminiscence, 
psychologically true to myself, I must say this 
— those were days of intensity in politics 
throughout the nation. I stood on the window 
sill the three hours without sympathy with the 



26 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

effort of Mr. Choate and in a spirit of aliena- 
tion from Mr. Webster. How I came in such 
attitude I will set forth. This will reveal a 
prominent element in the psychology of the 
times. If not of " the most straitest sect" of 
the Abolitionists I had " sat at the feet of their 
Gamaliels " and had become imbued with their 
principles. I must say that " The Seventh of 
March Speech " was not viewed by a large ele- 
ment of the people with suspended judgment; 
judgment ran against it. As I stood in the win- 
dow, how could I be in sympathy with Mr. 
Choate? Three-quarters of a year before I 
heard Mr. Choate I had purchased and read 
Theodore Parker's " Funeral Oration," deliv- 
ered immediately after Mr. Webster's death. 
It is a masterly piece of rhetoric. I was pre- 
possessed by it. It led a great chorus of con- 
demnation of Mr. Webster. I am not certain 
but the kakophemy — the curse of Theodore 
Parker — still has more influence over the mind 
of a verv large section of the American people 
than the eulogy of Rufus Choate. That this 
is a grievous wrong to Mr, Webster I think and 
have thought for many years. But it took time 
and event to show the unwisdom of Theodore 
Parker. As I stood in the church window the 
time and event had not received their unveiling. 
Let me read a paragraph from Parker. It will 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 27 

show not only my attitude, but a widely preva- 
lent psychology of the day. 

" To accomplish a bad purpose he resorted to mean 
artifice, to the low tricks of vulgar adventurers in poli- 
tics. , . . What was the design of all this? It was 
' to save the Union.' Such was the cry. Was the 
Union in danger? Here were a few non-resistants at 
the north who said, ' We will have no union with slave 
holders.' There was a party of seccders at the south 
who periodically blustered about disunion. Could 
these men bring the Union into peril? Did Daniel 
Webster think so? I shall never insult that giant 
intellect by the thought." 

Now I shall make no comment on that para- 
graph. Long years ago I wrote in the margin 
of my copy, "What of 1861?" There it 
stands. Some of us have lived through '61-5. 
Neither Mr. Choate nor Theodore Parker saw 
that day and its revelations. Mr. Choate died 
in '59 and Parker in '60. We are in position 
now to determine whose prevision was safest — 
that of Rufus Choate or that of Theodore Par- 
ker: that which came to the front in the lament 
of the one or the curse of the other. The prob- 
able, in view of which Mr. Webster acted and 
on the ground of which Mr. Choate made de- 
fense for him, became the actual before our 
eyes. We have seen " States discordant, dis- 
severed, belligerent and drenched with fraternal 



2 8 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

blood." " A prudent man foreseeth the evil 
and hideth himself." Mr. Webster foresaw 
the evil and put forth mighty effort to hide the 
nation from it. But many men could not and 
would not in that day give him credit for " the 
spirit of prophecy." They could only judge as 
we have seen Theodore Parker judge that 
" to accomplish a bad purpose " — to wit his 
own personal ambition for the presidency — he 
delivered " The Seventh of March Speech." 
That suggestion not only had its day when it 
had its day, but it survived afterward when 
there was no excuse for it, and it even still 
reigns dominant in many minds. It is hard for 
some people to entertain the possibility of the 
integrity of Mr. Webster in his political action 
in 1850. They resemble the witness in respect 
to whose credibility a neighbor testified, " Ordi- 
narily he would not tell the truth, but put him 
under oath and he could not." They seem to 
be incapable of telling the truth about Mr. 
Webster. They cannot think of anything but 
that he " fell " and that " Ichabod " must be 
written over him. His name operates on them 
like a red flag on a bull. No sooner do they 
hear the name than down goes a horn to gore. 
It is strange how this attitude survives. In the 
main address before a state Bar Association 
but a few years since the speaker dismissed Mr. 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 29 

Webster as a discredited politician whose epi- 
taph is " Ichabod." And right there comes up 
an instance of the difficulty that some good men 
have found to dispossess themselves of a mis- 
construction they have once entertained, of a 
misrepresentation they once have made. There 
is good evidence that the saintly Whittier felt 
he had done Mr. Webster injustice in the poem 
"Ichabod," and that he wrote "The Lost 
Occasion " to atone for it and rectify himself. 
But even Mr. Whittier could not divest him- 
self of the gravamen of the charge brought 
against Mr. Webster in his first poem. To 
begin with, why call his attempted reparation 
" The Lost Occasion "? A man does not lose 
what he never had. Mr. Webster did not lose 
whatever " occasion " there was for somebody 
in '61-5, for he died in '52. Perhaps he saw 
the " occasion" in 1850. He was accustomed 
to see " occasions " before they occurred. 
Primogeniture and undivided entail of real es- 
tate were prohibited in France while it was yet 
a monarchy. Mr. Webster said that would 
make France a republic. The France of to- 
day verifies Mr. Webster's prevision. 

" Shaming ambition's paltry prize, 
Before thy disillusioned eyes; 
Breaking the spell about thee wound, 
Like the green withes that Samson bound ; 



^o EULOGY OF CHOATE 

Redeeming in one effort grand, 
Thyself and thy imperiled land." 

The implications are as bad here as in 
" Ichabod." Redemption is a doctrine for sin- 
ners. I do not know of any one else who has 
need of it. "Thy imperiled land!" Ah, 
then the land was imperiled! In 1850 Mr. 
Webster thought it would come into peril 
through the passionate partizan feeling then 
existing. 

" Coming events cast their shadows before." 
The statesman reads the meaning In the shad- 
ows. Did not Mr. Webster read that mean- 
ing In 1850? There Is terrible history to stand 
as witness that he did. What Mr. Webster 
might have done in '61-5 it is idle to specu- 
late. 

What he did do in 1850 raises an ethical 
question. On that I desire to turn attention 
to the treatment given by Mr. Choate. To 
this day no better defense of Mr. Webster 
in the forum of ethics has been made. Mr. 
Choate's greatness nowhere comes out more 
grandly than in his method In ethics here. Do 
not neglect to study It. And bear in mind that 
Mr. Choate could not make the appeal to '6i-'5, 
for he died in the spring of '59. He had, as 
justification for Mr. Webster, to deal with a 
probability which did not become actual till 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 31 

after he himself was dead. By taking and 
holding this position he showed the courage of 
a friend and the vision of a statesman. It 
took both to defend Mr. Webster in 1853. 

We have developed in theology the doctrine 
of salvation by invincible ignorance. It may 
be somewhat difficult to define rules for the 
working of the doctrine. It would seem in 
case of ignorance that the examiner might re- 
gard the ignorance as notice to quit and claim 
release from duty to pass judgment at all. But 
there is something more difficult to deal with 
than invincible ignorance. Invincible prejudice 
Is worse. 

" In the lowest deep, a lower deep 

Still threatening to devour, opens wide." 

As you look at ignorance, you cannot charge 
it, in itself, as culpable. But when you look 
on prejudice you look on mind wilfully closed 
against knowledge, actual or possible. That 
attitude is simply morally wrong. 

I have no space to itemize, but from begin- 
ning to end Mr. Lodge's " Life of Daniel Web- 
ster " shows a mind unsympathetic, ungenerous 
and unfair. The twist sinister is given at every 
opportunity possible. Time and event seem to 
have no influence upon him. In prejudice 
against Mr. Webster he is relentless. Take 



32 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

this sentence from his address at the unveiling 
of the Trentanove statue in Washington, Janu- 
ary 1 8, 1900. "This passionate love of his 
country, this dream of her future inspired his 
greatest effort, were even the chief cause at the 
end of his life to make sacrifices of principle," 
" To make sacrifices of principle " encloses the 
idea of ethical laches, or It has no meaning. It 
means to think or do some moral wrong. Such 
accusation, too, forty years after the War of 
the Rebellion! 

General Sherman said: "War is hell." 
Did we not have " the gates of Hades " 
opened wide in '61-5? We are not yet free 
from the consequences of that " Hell." It was 
in view of the possibility of such wickedness 
and wretchedness that Mr. Webster made the 
speech for " the Constitution and the Union " 
in 1850. Can he not be credited with a states- 
man's prevision? Might there not be moral 
considerations connected with such foresight? 
But Mr. Lodge insists upon trying Mr. 
Webster by the condition of 1850. Is it not 
" sharp practice " to exclude evidence of justi- 
fication in view of which Mr. Webster pro- 
fessed to act — evidence open to earth and high 
heaven? 

The subject of conflict of duties is as old as 
the human race, and Is likely to last as long. 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 33 

Mr. Choate has discussed that matter with 
supreme ability in the eulogy, both theoretically 
and practically in regard to the Compromise 
Measures of 1850. It is the common lot of 
ethical man to be summoned to make adjust- 
ment between not merely two but a crowd of 
duties. It may be as ethical to choose the less 
of two impending wrongs, not indeed to ap- 
prove but to endure, as the better of two 
optional rights. In 1850 there was a question 
of the choice of evils. On the one hand was 
the institution of slavery and on the other the 
probability of war. There is no question about 
the wrong of slavery. John Wesley said: 
" Slavery is the sum of all villainies." Abra- 
ham Lincoln said: "There is nothing wrong 
if slavery is not wrong." But we were bound 
in a government that recognized slavery and 
the practical question was — men being what 
they are, how to deal with slavery without 
plunging the nation into war. The parable of 
the tares has application here. By common 
consent he who spake it had good and compre- 
hensive vision in ethics. 

" The servants of the householder came and said unto 

him : ' Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field ; 

. from whence, then, hath it these tares? ' He said unto 

them : ' An enemy hath done this.' The servants said 

unto him: 'Wilt thou then that we go and gather 



34 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

them up? ' But he said, ' Nay, lest while ye gather up 
the tares ye root up also the wheat with them.' " 

That certainly teaches that we must some- 
times bear ills lest by attempt at sudden ter- 
mination we do irreparable damage to the good. 
Conditions are to be taken into account. Mr. 
Lincoln dealt more wisely and effectively with 
the evil of slavery in 1863 than John Brown 
in 1859. 

Now we can look back over history, and the 
ethical judgment of most sane, rational people, 
I think, will be that Mr. Webster was not 
wrong in his attitude. The single thing that 
slavery took by the Compromise Measures of 
1850 was an amended fugitive slave law. All 
the other elements of those measures inured 
to the benefit of liberty. We were entangled 
in the Constitution of the nation with a pro- 
vision for the return of fugitive slaves. George 
Washington signed a law to execute this pro- 
vision. That law was on the statute book in 
1850. To Mr. Webster, under those histor- 
ical conditions, an amendment to the fugitive 
slave law was a less evil than disunion and war. 

The only question in ethics in the decision of 
this matter was whether he had the approval 
of his ozvn moral judgment. Other people 
might have come to different moral conclusion. 
But that would not put him in the wrong, if his 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 35 

judgment was his ozvn. To decide that Mr. 
Webster was wrong because others did not 
agree with him is to mount into the judgment 
seat and assume the prerogatives of the Om- 
niscient God. " Who art thou that judgest 
another man's servant? — To his own master 
he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden 
up, for God is able to make him stand." 

" And only the Master shall praise us, 
And only the Master shall blame." 

WEBSTER AND LINCOLN 

The injustice of men can nowhere be more 
plainly seen than in the fates and fortunes of 
Mr. W^ebster and Mr. Lincoln. Some of us 
can remember when the common designation 
of Mr. Lincoln was " Baboon." Yet he is no 
better now than he was then. Mr. Webster 
did not invent a fugitive slave law. Mr. Lin- 
coln did. When he was a representative in 
Congress in the later '40s, he drew up and se- 
cured the passage of a fugitive slave law for 
the District of Columbia. As President and 
Commander-in-Chief of the x\rmy and Navy, 
when by the laws of war he was not thereto 
compelled, he returned more fugitive slaves at 
the point of the bayonet than had been returned 
in the whole history of the government, and 



36 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

prevented slaves from completing their own es- 
cape by closing the lines of the army against 
them. Yet we have by universal consent just 
voted a two million dollar temple to the name 
and fame of Mr. Lincoln, while the tomb at 
Marshfield is neglected and unhonored. 

The reply to Hayne, with its refrain, '* Lib- 
erty and Union, now and forever, one and in- 
separable," made Appomattox Court House 
possible as truly as the skill of generals operat- 
ing under Mr. Lincoln. Certainly Mr. Webster 
was not behind Mr. Lincoln in devotion to the 
Union. The main ground why the people do 
not have the same enthusiastic pride in the one 
great man as in the other is that Mr. Webster 
in 1850 supported a fugitive slave law. But 
remember that nine years after Mr. Webster 
was in his grave, Mr. Lincoln in his first inau- 
gural address, with all his solemn earnestness, 
besought the people of the United States to ex- 
ecute in sincerity the fugitive slave law. 

Aye, go on with the apotheosis of Abraham 
Lincoln! It is just. But if you would be just 
take the ban from Daniel Webster. 

Defense of Mr. Webster in 1850 may not 
include approval of every sentence in " The 
Seventh of March Speech," nor in subsequent 
speeches. A note of irritation against those 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 37 

who criticised him without mercy may be appar- 
ent. If not excused, it may be explained. 
Mr. Whittier never wrote truer lines than 
these : 

" Not always age is growth of good : 
Its years have losses with their gain. 
Against some evil youth withstood 
Its hands may strive in vain." 

Mr. Webster was physically ill from 1850 
onward to the end. The process of disinte- 
gration of that magnificent material system in 
and with which he had wrought had set in. It 
takes force to control force. And the nervous 
forces were slipping from the old time firm 
grasp. Near the shore of age a rope in the 
rigging may slacken in a squall that sang taut 
to all storms on mid-seas. A rudder old and 
worn may not respond readily or even accu- 
rately to compass call in an exigency, yet the 
ship may drop anchor in its destined harbor and 
the main purpose of the voyage be achieved. 

I must speak of Mr. Webster's character in 
morals, and position in religion. I do this not 
more for the defense of Webster than because 
in what I write will be revealed the greatness 
and goodness of Mr. Choate. Recollect, Mr. 
Webster was his lifelong antagonist at the bar, 
for they were usually arrayed against each 



38 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

other, — and then remember that from mind 
and heart he wrote as follows: 

" From these (Webster's) conversations of friend- 
ship, no man — old or young — went away to remem- 
ber one word of profaneness; one allusion of indelicacy; 
one impure thought; one unbelieving suggestion; one 
doubt cast on the reality of virtue, of patriotism, of 
enthusiasm, of the progress of man ; one doubt cast on 
righteousness, or temperance, or judgment to come." 

Mark Mr. Choate's language. That is the 
utterance of a lifelong observer — himself a 
moral knight without fear and without reproach. 
See what ground the language covers in interest 
and extent of moral principles. That challenge 
has been before the world for sixty years — 
has any one couched a lance against it? " If 
any man offend not in word the same is a per- 
fect man and able also to bridle the whole 
body." ..." Doth a fountain send forth at 
the same place sweet water and bitter? " 

There are writers who have visited banquet 
halls and scoured streets of disrepute to find 
testimony that Mr. Webster was not " able to 
bridle the whole body." What they have pro- 
duced is mere hearsay — the tattle of the slums. 
Reputable people, from prejudice against Mr. 
Webster on other grounds, have allowed them- 
selves to give currency to such tattle. Mr. 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 39 

Lodge can find no better authority for the insin- 
uations of immoralities he allows himself to 
print than " popular report." 

Mr. Webster was surrounded all his life by 
a great cloud of witnesses — noble men and 
honorable women. They never uttered a 
breath against his uprightness in family and so- 
cial life. When Mr. Webster died, the phy- 
sician who had w'atched him for years chal- 
lenged any one to prove that he had ever used 
drug or stimulant that for a moment would 
cloud his mind in the production of state papers. 

Mr. Webster stands in moral honor in reput- 
able society. Choose whose testimony you will 
take. Indifference in attitude is not tolerable. 
There may be immorality in lending an indolent 
ear to him who asperses character and not pin- 
ning him down to facts. Allow for faults, im- 
perfections, errors and sins such as are common 
to man in the struggle for existence, in heats and 
misunderstandings of politics, in adjustment of 
divers interests, in regulation of passions and 
forces, yet Mr. Webster stands before you — 
a lover of integrity and right, in the majesty of 
moral solemnity, and like " Boston and Lexing- 
ton and Concord and Bunker Hill, there he will 
remain forever." 

Here I wish to say that the evidence is just 
as good for the reliability of Peter Harvey's 



40 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

" Reminiscences " as it is for " The Life " writ- 
ten by Mr, Lodge. If anyone will read Mr. 
Harvey's account of the visit of Webster, just 
a year before he died, to old John Colby of An- 
dover, New Hampshire, and of their talk on re- 
ligion, of their prayers together; hear Mr. 
Webster say, " I hope and trust I am a Chris- 
tian " ; see how natural it was to the man — 
and wishes to regard such account as fictitious, 
toleration must give him liberty, but the most 
of us will pity his weakness of mind. In all 
cases of accusation of immoralities judgment 
must be rendered for Mr. Webster because of 
lack of any evidence. 

INTOXICANTS 

In regard to the use of intoxicant drinks, it 
must be remembered that Mr. Webster came 
up to active life in a state of society that allowed 
their use for all public occasions — even church 
assemblies. The moral rule in the matter was 
not abstinence but temperance — control. It 
must be remembered that the wave of the move- 
ment for total abstinence did not come to crest 
till the early forties. Mr. Webster was then 
sixty years old. The evidence is undeniable 
and ample that, even under the liberties of the 
old regime, he always kept control of himself. 

The new and the stricter view was not witli- 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 41 

out its Influence over him. The testimony of 
his physician, Dr. Jeffries, cannot be gainsaid. 
The doctor says that before Mr. Webster's 
last speech In Faneull Hall he advised him to 
take a little stimulant. Mr. Webster's reply 
was, " I think I shall not. I have found the 
benefit of temperance." When later in his 
sickness stimulants were prescribed, he was par- 
ticular that not a drop more was given him than 
the exact amount prescribed by the doctor. A 
physician is a good judge of the effect his pa- 
tient's habits have had upon him. This is Dr. 
Jeffries' conclusion: "I confidently express the 
opinion that his (Mr. Webster's) great intel- 
lect was never clouded by stimulants, or that he 
was unfitted at any time, even for the produc- 
tion of state papers." Thus stands the evi- 
dence, and " the gates of the slums shall not pre- 
vail against It." 

RELIGION 

Mr. Lodge, In his customary way of speak- 
ing In derogation of Mr. Webster, says that 
whatever religion he had was only of the ordi- 
nary common sort. It is true Mr. Webster was 
not as demonstrative in religion as John Wesley 
or Billy Sunday. But very much can be made 
out of common religion. The common ele- 
ments in It may have high intrinsic value and 



42 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

wide range. Common sense Is not a trivial 
matter If It Is common. As fine a tribute as 
you can pay anyone Is to say that he has com- 
mon sense. Mr. Webster's great power intel- 
lectually Is largely attributable to his common 
sense, which Is only what all men have. It Is 
said that when men heard him speak they re- 
ported that he said just what they themselves 
were thinking. Kipling's lines run: 

" Each in his separate star 
Shall draw the thing as he sees it 
For the God of things as they are." 

Common sense is a summary of things as 
they are. That is why it Is valued so highly. 
Men are satisfied when they feel they have at- 
tained something which " the Everlasting hath 
fixed In his canon " and they feel that what all 
men assent to must be so fixed. The consent 
Is regarded as verification. In last result sci- 
ence becomes common sense. It is demonstra- 
tion of what must be uni\-crsally accepted or it 
is not science. 

The law of gravitation has become a tenet of 
common sense because It answers a common 
requisition for explanation of the massing of 
matter. The Copernlcan system is satisfactory 
to common sense. All of the so-called laws 
of matter and force must ultimately come to 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 43 

judgment before that tribunal. Yet we are not 
going to speak in derogation of Copernicus and 
Newton and the great company of investigators 
in science because where a principle is once 
found everybody can understand it or because 
others could and did find it. 

Our confidence in democracy as a system of 
government rests upon confidence in the com- 
mon sense of the people — in their common 
ability to see what is wise and right in the com- 
mon regulation of action. 

Now it may be that the common, ordinary 
perception in religion is as valuable as else- 
where, that mastery of the knowledge of prin- 
ciples that are or should be applied in life is of 
as high rank as anything else upon which the 
mind of man can work. If so, it may be that a 
man who detects and explains what must be- 
come common sense in religion is worthy of es- 
teem as is one who performs similar function 
in other departments. It may be that Mr. 
Webster was a prophet in ethics. If not a dis- 
coverer, he was an expounder in theology and 
religion as well as in the treatment of national 
government or international policy. The de- 
tection and application of ethics to condition is 
the supreme exercise of the mind of man. An 
order for it is writ in his very nature. There 
is no rational life without the presence therein 



44 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

of this call. No better statement of this fun- 
damental religious truth has been made by man 
than that of Mr. Webster in the conclusion of 
the argument in the White murder case. 

" A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent 
like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of 
the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the 
sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, 
for our happiness or our misery. If we say the dark- 
ness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our 
obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their 
power nor fly from their presence." 

That is exactly the rule in Cain's case, writ 
away back in the dimness of Hebrew history, 
and was recognized as common sense in He- 
brew religious thought. "If thou doest well 
shalt thou not be approved, if thou doest not 
well, sin coucheth at the door." 

Then you may go clear across one of the earli- 
est chasms in the separation of the primal race 
and you will find the same common ethical sense 
prevailing in the early activities of the Aryan 
mind. In the laws of Manu it is writ as para- 
phrased by Whittier : 

" The soul itself its awful witness is; 
Say not in evil doing, ' No one sees,' 
And so offend the Conscious One within, 
Whose ear can hear the silences of sin 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 45 

Ere they find voice, whose eyes unsleeping see 
The secret motions of iniquity. 

" Nor in thy folly say, ' I am alone,' 
For, seated on thy heart as on a throne. 
The Ancient Judge and Witness liveth still 
To note thy act and thought, and as thy ill 
Or good goes from thee, far beyond thy reach, 
The Solemn Doomsman seal is set on each." 

Mr. Webster in the White case seems to have 
had command of a common ethical possession, 
to which he could make appeal, that Included the 
whole horizon of man In time and space. We 
find in common moral sensation 

" To health of soul a voice to cheer and please ; 
To guilt the wrath of the Eumenides." 

Mr. Webster was not amiss In calling the at- 
tention of the jury In the White case to this 
common ethical sense. 

A few days before he died Mr. Webster 
wrote with his own hand: "The gospel of Je- 
sus Christ must be a divine reality." An ordi- 
nary sentence In religion. But look at Its Im- 
measurable range In common sense. 

" O Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place 
In all generations. Before the mountains were 
brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the 
earth and the world, even from everlasting to 



46 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

everlasting thou art God." Mrs. Stowe said 
that that is the most sublime thought which ever 
entered the mind of man. Yet It is enclosed in 
the simple word " divine " used by Mr. Web- 
ster. " Reality " is a term In common use and 
has signification which is very toughly held by 
all men. You find reality on earth. You can 
find the same reality in the sun. You can find 
it in Arcturus. You can find it in 

" Every spark that walks alone 

Around the utmost verge of heaven " — 

SO distant that " the eye of man hath not seen 
nor can see it," of whose existence the ether 
alone can tell; yet there dwells the same reality 
that you touch on earth. 

If a moral being " takes the wings of the 
morning and dwells " In the sun or in Arcturus 
or in a star invisible, his " obligations will yet 
be upon him; he cannot escape their power or 
fly their presence," and he will everywhere find 
" the gospel of Jesus Christ a divine reality." 

If you wish to shut your eyes to what you can 
see and to what the ether can tell, you can speak 
slightingly of Mr. Webster's conceptions and 
attitude In theology and religion. What is 
common may be great. What one makes of 
the common determines his greatness in ethics 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 47 

and religion as elsewhere. To take an expres- 
sion from our ancient friend — Paley — "If 
a man pitches his foot against a stone " he con- 
cludes to the reality of matter. But his con- 
clusion is equally to the reality of the approval 
he feels for a right act, and to the reality of the 
fact that " sin coucheth at the door " for an act 
of wrong. Ethical right and wrong are as real 
as matter and force. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes — a man not blind 
nor a bigot — wrote of Mr. Webster: 

" In toil he lived ; in peace he died ; 
When life's full cycle was complete, 
Put off his robes of power and pride 
And laid them at his Master's feet." 

What more can you ask? What more can 
you get in religion? That is simply the out- 
come of its common sense. Mr. Webster was 
as sincere In his religious testimony in those last 
few weeks and days as he was in the " Reply to 
Hayne." " The rapt and parting soul " met 
the summons to the great transition in Chris- 
tian fearlessness and trust. It is discredit to 
Christians that they have not gloried in that 
profession as a triumph of faith. It is igno- 
rance unpardonable or cowardice base not to 
add Mr. Webster's deathbed testimony to that 



48 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

of the long roll of the great and noble who have 
asserted the staying power, the comfort and the 
satisfaction, of the Christian faith. 

Now I return to Mr. Choate and the eulog>^ 
Mr. Choate was a metaphysician. That fact 
gleams from the pages of this great eulogy. It 
is related of him that in haunting bookstores if 
he found a treatise on metaphysics he would 
say, " Ah, here is meat " ; would purchase, and 
put in the evenings at home in its study. He 
was right; metaphysics is everywhere, and met- 
apsychics too. The " metas " are out to the 
front in everything. Mr. Tyndall says imagi- 
nation is the pioneer in science. Why? Be- 
cause the ideal is in the grain of things — that 
you can assume. If you are after a new sci- 
entific truth, imagine it, then verify to see if 
what you imagine will correspond with what is 
expressed in nature. If it will not, imagine 
again and try that. When your idea and the 
idea of nature correspond, you know you have 
made a discovery — you have found a fact; 
common sense will recognize it. Wherever 
there are mathematics, esthetics or ethics there 
are the " metas " of physics or of psychics. Old 
philosophy laid down at the base of known na- 
ture, earth, air, fire and water. The old phi- 
losophy was right — all honor to it. Earth, 
air, fire and water are here today. But they 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 49 

give each " metas " beyond themselves piled 
" Pelion upon Ossa " high. Take water; the 
first thing chemistry does is to break it up into 
two elements which are still matter. But the 
next thing it does is to find mathematics, a met- 
aphysic, in it. Then it finds another meta- 
physic — to wit, esthetics — attached. The 
rainbow is neither matter nor mathematics, 
however much they may be involved in it. 
But there it is — inherent in the water that bub- 
bles from a spring on the mountain, or tumbles 
in the waves of the sea, or shines in the vapors 
of Saturn. The writer of the book of the Rev- 
elation says, " And there was a rainbow round 
about the throne." He has traced esthetics as 
well as ethics up to the Majesty of Last Resort. 
He makes Him to say: " I will have beauty, as 
well as number, righteousness and might." 
These all are " metas " in their various realms. 
Accompanying them are others, stretching out 
into infinity. With them we have to do. Now 
will you bring us back to the sod and say, " Oh, 
these things are beyond our grasp. We cannot 
weigh them on scales, or measure them by feet 
and inches." Browning says, " A man's reach 
should exceed his grasp." The ability we 
have and the invitation to reach out into such 
realms that cannot be defined in terms of any 
other, to reach where we cannot and never shall 



50 EULOGY OF CHOATE 

find end, is one of the muniments of our title to 
immortality — one of the beauties of the eter- 
nity that lies before us. 

That Mr. Choate was in various ways versed 
in exercise in the realm of the " metas " is dis- 
closed in the eulogy — in the appropriateness 
of the quiet manner of its delivery, in the un- 
disturbed repose of the three hours of speech. 
No matter what took place about him — though 
in the last hour it grew dark, lights were brought 
in, torrents poured from the skies, and the 
thunder 

" Roared and howled 
And cracked and growled 
Like noises in a swound " — 

Still the tide of eloquence flowed on in confidence 
and serenity. There is metapsychic in these at- 
titudes, in the threnic tone which pervaded all 
— a plaintive idealism, yet a reality as much as 
the rain. 

CONCLUSION 

In conclusion I call attention to the coinci- 
dence of these two great minds in the metaphys- 
ics and metapsychics that come to view in ethics. 
Mr. Webster pressed upon the jury in the 
White case obedience to the common possession, 
the sense of moral obligation. In comment 



ON DANIEL WEBSTER 51 

upon that Mr. Choate fills a page of the eulogy. 
He quotes from Mr. Webster, " A sense of 
duty pursues us ever; duty performed or duty 
violated will be with us for our happiness or 
our misery." Then he makes his own synthe- 
sis of the phenomena of duty in these words, 
" the universality and authoritativeness and 
eternity of its obligation." Such statement 
makes ethical religion common. Great is he 
who can make the most and the best use of it. 

I commend this synthesis to ethicists and the- 
ologians. They ought to impress it upon " a 
generation that sits in the market place " intent 
only " to pipe and to dance," a generation given 
only to recreation, a generation of whom it may 
be said as of one of old: " The people sat down 
to eat and drink and rose up to play." 

O theologians and ethicists, call back, call 
back, to thought, feeling and action inspired by 
conviction of the " universality, the authorita- 
tiveness, the eternity of moral obligation." 



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